To The River and Back Again

The Work Recently
Sorry for the delay in posting, we have been on vacation for the past week. We have been working hard on publishing our design reports and hope to be done in the next couple of weeks.

Trekking
For our week of vacation we decided to go for a several day hike nearby the Himalayan mountians. We chose a hike that would put us at less than 5 miles from the peak of the mountain(Bandarpunch) which we can see from our office window. The peak at Bandarpunch is at 20,700 feet which is taller than any peak in North America. 5 of the interns went as well as one of our Indian friends from Mussoorie.








Bandarpunch from the office







Sunday
We started at 5:30 AM with a windy taxi ride to the trail head, taking about 6 hours to get there and with a few members of our group getting car sick. We were armed with hiking equipment that was more applicable for summer camping out of the trunk of your car than for a autumn hike in the Himalayas, although our one saving grace is that everyone had a mummy bag. We hiked about 9 kms Sunday afternoon to a village where we camped out.

Monday
On Monday we hiked to what was sort of our base camp, it is an alpine lake called Dodital. It is a place considered sacred by Hindus and was about 14 kms from where we camped the night before. The lake is at about 10,000 feet of elevation so most of our hike was a steady ascent towards the lake. We also camped out that night as well, and decided our itinerary for the rest of the trip. Most people who hike to Dodital only day hike out of there and then return the same way they came into Dodital. We decided that was kind of lame as there was another route described in the guide book that would bring us up the pass and along the valley until we reached the next town about 25 kms down the river from the pass. With that decided that we would relax on Tuesday.

Tuesday
Tuesday was our chill day, we relaxed and got prepared for the hike up the pass. Unfortunately we got heavy rain that evening which flooded our tents and forced us to spend the night in the resthouse located in Dodital.







Bandarpunch from Darwa Pass











Wednesday
Our hike up to the Darwa Pass got slightly delayed. We had hoped to get started at about 5:30 AM to make it up to the pass before the clouds rolled in and ruined our view. However it was raining when we woke up and didn't get started until around 6:30 AM. We booked it up the trail and made it there by 8:45AM which is pretty good consider most groups take at least two hours and they usually day-hike, while we had all our gear on our backs heading up to the pass. Darwa Pass is at about 13,500 feet so it was a pretty intense hike up from Dodital. From the pass Bandarpunch and the Swargarohini mountain range are in view. We got there in time to see a bit of the mountains before the clouds got there. Nick and I went for a little side hike up to a better view point. After spending a few hours at the pass we decided to head off west along the valley. The guide book describes the trail as "little more than an ill-defined goat track." We apparently didn't find that ill-defined goat track and we were not hiking at the top of the ridge as we later determined we were supposed to be doing. What this led to was having to go up and down valleys that could have been avoided if we were hiking at the top of the ridge before any valley formed. We found a place to camp that was probably around 11,000 feet and fortunately we discovered this old hut that had a bunch of firewood surrounding it, so at least we were able to get warm by the fire. The place were we camped at was pretty cool as Bandarpunch was still in view. When I got up around 11 to go pee, the sky was completly clear and the moon was almost full so the view was pretty impressive.








Our vantage point









Bandarpunch from our campsite






Thursday
We began the morning by hiking up the hill a bit to get an idea of where we were supposed to go and how to get there. We realized where we had camped was essentially on a cliff over a valley. We could see our final destination down the river valley and we had two options. We could hike up to the high ridge and hike all the way around the valley or we thought that maybe we could hike down to the river and follow the river along to the village. The river looked pretty tame from 3,000 feet above and seemed like there was plenty of riverbed to hike along. So we spent much of the morning hiking down through the forest essentially blazing our own trail. We didn't make it more than 500meters down the river until we realized that what we were trying to do was basically impossible. The river was in full rage and landslides,boulders, and cliffs made it extremely difficult to hike down the river. Our thought to not backtrack along the trail was thwarted, and the decision was made to hike back to where we came from and get back to Dodital. At this point it had started raining and hailing. We hiked back up the river about 1 km and then began the 4,000 or so vertical foot climb back to the pass. The higher elevations had gotten snow which made it almost seem like I was back in Michigan. We got to Darwa Pass around 6:30 PM under moonlight and through an inch or two of snow(which is astonishing to the two Texans and the one Californian on our trip). Most of our gear and clothes were wet from the rain and snow that we had had that day so we decided to hike down from the pass to Dodital where we thought we might have a warm meal and a dry place to spend the night. So we hiked down the pass under moonlight and flashlight and got into Dodital around 10PM. There is a dhaba(a food hut/shack) in Dodital which we had eaten at before. We woke the dhaba walla who kindly lite a fire for us and cooked us hot food and chai. I think we sat in front of the fire for about 3 hours warming up and drying out our clothes. The dhaba also had a few beds for us to sleep in, which we gladly accepted.





The snowy higher elevations









Friday
We began our journey back down to the start of the trail. We had an uneventful 24 km hike that day and got back to the town of Uttarkashi around 7PM. Unfortunately there were no more buses leaving that evening so we stayed in a hotel near the bus station and caught the first bus back to Mussoorie on Saturday morning.

Prayer Requests
Please continue to pray for our project reports
Please pray for our outreach to the guys that we are teaching english to

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http://www.emi2southasia.org/indianthread/E_Thread_Current.pdf

With Love,
Nate